


i wish it was mine

by deluxemycroft



Series: couldn't get the boy to kill me [2]
Category: Marvel, Marvel Cinematic Universe, The Avengers (Marvel Movies)
Genre: (really kind of unintentional), Ableism, Agoraphobia, Alternate Universe - Soulmates, Angst, Angst with a Happy Ending, Anxiety, Anxiety Attacks, At least in my opinion, Bisexual Clint Barton, Coercion, Deaf Clint Barton, Depression, Gay Bucky Barnes, Hydra, Hydra Bucky Barnes, Hydra Clint Barton, Insecurities, Loyalty, M/M, Mental Health Issues, Mind Control Aftermath & Recovery, Miscommunication, Panic Attacks, Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder - PTSD, Recovery, Soulmate-Identifying Marks, Soulmates, Unreliable Narrator, its all insecurities and then it gets better, mention of past attempted coerced non-con, mention of past clint/natasha, or angst with a kind of bittersweet ending that makes u think itll be happy soon, post torture, post trauma, selective mutism, the thorki is really only implied but its part of it
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-10-26
Updated: 2019-10-26
Packaged: 2021-01-03 13:33:27
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 11,426
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/21180257
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/deluxemycroft/pseuds/deluxemycroft
Summary: After he is rescued from HYDRA's imprisonment, Clint must learn how to live a life outside the walls of his cell.He isn't very good at it.





	i wish it was mine

**Author's Note:**

> WHEW!!!!!!! okay. whew. so right when i finished 'sorry about the blood in your mouth' i knew i wanted to write a sequel to it. i just didn't know What. but i've had an idea that i've tried to write a few times and it never really worked out of clint just being an absolute depressed sad mess, and i finally wrote it! i did it. hopefully this series scratched my itch for hydra clint and also horribly awful depressed clint. whew. also i couldn't think of anything for jarvis to call clint other than 'agent barton' even though clint wasn't a shield agent in this verse, so just roll with that. 
> 
> anyway, warnings are in the tags. thank you so much for reading and i hope you enjoy

Clint lived without HYDRA for far longer than he lived under it, yet he now finds it impossible. He feels strange, as if every step is onto ice that may break underneath him, as if every breath may be his last. 

James seems to have no such issue. Clint cannot talk to James about his problems—what is a year and a half to over seventy—and it seems that his soulmate, even with his nightmares and occasional hallucinations, has regained his sense of self far easier than Clint himself. Clint knew who he was before—he was Hawkeye, he was Clint Barton, he was Avenger and brother and friend and confidant—but when he looks in the mirror now, the man looking back is unfamiliar. 

He talks to Natasha, who understands best. She was also broken and shaped into someone different, someone benefitting her captors. She listens to him and tells him to spill his woes to James. 

But Clint _can’t_.

He’s tried. 

He’s sat next to James and asked him to listen and he opens his mouth and the words won’t come. He’s tried writing, but his hands only know how to hold weapons and no longer pen or paper. He even tried sign language but his fingers refuse to bend to the shapes. All he ends up doing is sitting in front of his soulmate, staring at him, getting frustrated with himself, and then rushing off in fury at the way his body refuses to obey him. 

They sleep in the same bed. 

It is Clint’s saving grace to wake up and see his soulmate asleep next to him. 

He’s not suicidal, he’s not the type, but he thinks he might’ve been if James hadn’t accepted their bond. 

James is constantly busy. He has therapist appointments, meetings with SHIELD agents, talks with Steve and Tony and the rest of the Avengers—he and Sam are becoming fast friends—and he just seems..._happy_. Neither of them can cook, but James tries a few times, makes some burned mess that has Clint laughing at him and James laughing at himself. 

But James can leave their small suite of rooms. 

Clint can’t.

He didn’t leave that cell of his for anything other than missions for over a year. He can’t deal with space much bigger than their small apartment without feeling like he’s going to have a panic attack, and he’s had a few of them. Tony likes big, open floor plans, so the entire Tower is big and open, and Clint can’t deal with it at all. 

He finds that if James comes with, if James holds his hand, then he can manage. But James is busy and Clint doesn’t want to ask. 

He’s a grown fucking man. He should be able to walk down the hall and to the elevators and up a few floors to the Avengers common space without losing his mind. He does fine on the walk to the elevator, and he’s comfortable in the small rattling box, but he can’t make himself step out. 

They tell him that PTSD affects everyone differently. They tell him that agoraphobia after forced incarceration is completely normal. They tell him there’s nothing wrong with him. They tell him all it takes is time. 

Clint does his best to believe them.

* * *

He wakes up in a cold sweat, grabbing blindly at the hand that’s already on his chest. He’s panting and he can feel his heart trembling. James slides closer, squeezing Clint’s hand tighter with his metal hand as his flesh hand slides down Clint’s stomach to palm his soulmark. The contact makes the panic squeezing his chest ease and he breathes a bit easier. There’s small puffs of breath against his ear as James moves even closer, pressing the length of his body against Clint’s, and Clint would give anything to know what his soulmate is saying. 

James seems to speak to him the most when Clint can’t hear. Sometimes he’ll be curled up on the couch, hearing aids on the coffee table, watching some TV show or movie with the subtitles on, and James will sit in the armchair next to the couch and just talk. Clint likes watching his mouth move, likes watching as he grows more comfortable with himself and the way his natural gestures and body language come out the longer he’s himself. James likes to curl up in bed and talk at Clint, and Clint only knows because sometimes he can feel the vibrations in James’s chest or they’ll have moments like this, where James is speaking and Clint can feel his exhalations. 

He just...he just wishes he could hear. 

He wishes that he didn’t have to be deaf for James to feel comfortable talking to him. He’s tried keeping his hearing aids in, or even using the smaller ones that he still had from HYDRA, but James always seems to know. 

All he wants is for James to feel comfortable. That’s all. If it takes taking out his hearing aids and not looking at James for too long while he talks because sometimes Clint can lip-read a little and get a gist of whatever he’s talking about and James always seems to know when he’s doing that and shuts down, then Clint will do it. It just kind of hurts, that’s all. But Clint is used to pain.

* * *

He thinks a lot about that moment they had in his cell at the HYDRA compound where they’d connected for a moment. Clint had thought that they’d maybe had a telepathic connection, but ever since then, there’s been nothing. He doesn’t even get emotion sharing from James, or any other of the really basic bonds, and Clint is trying to express to his therapist just how frustrating that is. 

He’s not very good at it. 

He knows they’re soulmates. His bond runs so deep with James that he has _two_ soulmarks. He thinks James only has the one, but one is still enough for soulbonds. Most people have only one soulmark anyway.

Words don’t come like they used to. He used to be able to talk all day and all night about whatever inane shit caught his fancy. Now it’s a struggle to even get a sentence out, especially when he’s talking about himself and his _feelings_. He can talk to James but to anyone else...his mouth refuses to work.

He’s alright with answering direct questions and he wouldn’t ever dream of not replying to something that Steve or Tony ask of him, but there’s been a few times where Nat or Bruce or someone else has asked a question of him and he’s known the answer and he’s opened his mouth to say it and his mouth doesn’t work. No matter what he does, the words won’t come. 

His therapist calls his selective mutism. Very common in PTSD, he says. Especially in people who were in positions like yours. 

It doesn’t feel common. 

Even Thor and his weird brother have come down to talk to him. Loki threw some magic at him that didn’t change anything, and Thor had gotten mad at Loki for using magic on a human. He’s supposed to be rehabilitated, Clint remembers, and then he thinks that some people—or some gods—don’t get to be rehabilitated. 

He thinks he’s one of them. 

His therapist is talking to him when the door to their apartment opens. James and Steve and Sam walk in, talking quietly and laughing. 

James notices them first. “Oh,” he says, stopping in his tracks, “I forgot.”

Clint glances at Steve and Sam and then puts his chin down and nods. “It’s alright,” he tells his soulmate. “We’re almost done here anyway.”

They’re not almost done; they’ve only been talking for twenty minutes, but his therapist nods and packs up his things and bids them adieu. That leaves Clint with James and Steve and Sam, and Sam immediately goes to the kitchen, digs through their fridge, and then asks JARVIS to order them something. They all take their seats around Clint in the tiny living room. He wants to curl up in a ball and hide. 

James sits on the far end of the couch from Clint. Sam posts up in the armchair and Steve perches on the arm of it, automatically reaching down and taking Sam’s hand. They’re almost always in physical contact, Clint notes. Nothing like him and his soulmate, who only seems to want to touch him when he’s half asleep and can’t hear anything he says. 

“He didn’t have to leave,” Steve tells him. “We all thought you were seeing him downstairs.”

Clint shakes his head. He tries to say that the small conference room—the smallest one in Avengers Tower—was still too big, and that he’d had panic attacks the two or three times he’d even managed to make it down there. But the words don’t come. He just sits there in stupid silence while his soulmate shifts uncomfortably and his friends give him sad looks and Clint wants to run, but there’s nowhere to go. He can’t even leave. 

James asks Sam and Steve about their last mission and Clint perks up in interest. He pulls a blanket over his legs and leans up against the arm of the couch as they talk. The Avengers are still cleaning up the mess left behind by HYDRA, and they’ve been clearing out warehouses and safe houses and compounds and all sorts of places. 

“Natasha got a cut on her arm,” Sam tells them. “She needed seventeen stitches.”

Clint freezes. Nat always used to come to him whenever she got hurt. He hadn’t even known this time. Jesus, she could’ve _died_. “She’s okay, though, right?” he asks, and it comes out too forceful, almost like a yell. “She’s fine?”

Sam nods. “Yeah, man, she’s fine. She didn’t tell you?”

Clint opens his mouth to say, _No, she didn’t, she only comes to visit once a week_—but his mouth doesn’t move, and then he remembers it’s been two weeks since Nat has come down and he can’t—

He gets up and flees to the bedroom. He wraps himself in blankets and curls up in the small spot between his side of the bed and the wall. He takes out his hearing aids and pulls a blanket over his head and sits in the hot dark. 

When he was in that cell, the lights had never gone out. They’d dimmed on occasion, not all the time, but sometimes. Not on any type of schedule, either, not that Clint had any ability to track the passage of time. But now he can’t handle too lights that are too bright. Especially when the sun is hot and straight overhead and it’s beating down on him like one of those cameras that had always been watching him and he couldn’t ever get away and he never had any privacy and one time after they’d taken his soulmate away, he’d jerked off and some of the guards had watched him and then they’d mocked him for it for _weeks_ and he couldn’t—

He wants to scream. 

Life doesn’t make sense anymore.

It used to. Before the cell, before HYDRA, life made sense.

He curls up into a ball and squeezes his eyes shut and tries to think of anything else. He thinks of James, sliding into bed next to him in that shitty cell, thinks of moving his thin mattress to the floor in front of the cell door and sleeping there, just in case his soulmate comes back, thinks of those long, long nights in the bigger rooms where he’d sat in front of the cryo chamber and just stared at his soulmate’s face in the small window in the metal door. 

He thinks that maybe he wasn’t supposed to survive HYDRA. He thinks that maybe they should’ve killed him.

* * *

James won’t kiss him. Clint—he _wants_. He’s tried. He’s woken up to James sleepy-eyed and soft in the morning and he’s leaned in close and James has turned away. He’s tried curling up with him on the couch and tilting his head up for a kiss and James has pretended to not even see him. He’s tried meeting James at the door after he’s been gone all day and brushing a kiss over his cheek only to have James turn away. 

Clint thinks of those nights in the cell where he’d done especially good work for HYDRA and they’d told him the Asset was his for the night and the lube and condoms on the tiny nightstand and all the jokes about completing the bond and taking what’s his and how good the Asset must be in bed because all he knows how to do is what you tell him. He wonders if that was his only chance and then feels so fucking disgusted with himself that he stands in the shower for an hour with the water as hot as he can stand it, trying to burn the want out of him. 

He’s never told James about any of that. He’s never told _anyone_ about that. He doesn’t even know what he would say. What, _HYDRA wanted me to rape you and even tried to goad me into it a few times and I never did, do I get a prize?_ God, he’s disgusting. 

Clint knows a better man would only want what his soulmate is willing to give. He knows that if James isn’t interested in him like that, then he should accept it. But he feels constantly on edge, like he’s always on verge of falling off a precipice, and it feels like James’s mouth on his is the only thing that can bring him back.

He wonders if it’s Steve. They were childhood best friends and all, a star-crossed love story, Steve pulling James out of his mind control. Maybe the soul bond is wrong. Clint has never heard of that happening, but first time for everything. Maybe James is in love with Steve and he just keeps Clint around—for what? Because Clint needs him? He doesn’t know. 

James never seems jealous of Sam, though, while Clint is horrifically jealous of him. Sam and James seemed to be old friends immediately, immediately resorting to mocking and poking fun at each other, riling each other up with stupid comments, and Sam is a touchy guy. He’s always putting a hand on James’s arm or his shoulder or, Clint has seen, his back. Clint _wants_ to say something—he knows that being overly possessive of your soulmate isn’t usually accepted, but a little is perfectly reasonable—but then he remembers that James only touches him when they’re in bed together and the lights are off and Clint doesn’t have his hearing aids in. 

Then, a very cold thought rises in the back of Clint’s mind: what if James doesn’t want to touch him at all? What if he remembers those nights in the cell and thinks he _has_ to? What if he remembers seeing the lube and the condoms and he thinks Clint did rape him? What if he thinks that if he holds Clint tight and in a way where he can be easily pinned down that Clint won’t hurt him again?

God, if James thinks all that...no wonder he won’t let Clint kiss him. 

So he tries to hold back the urge. It feels more like a need at this point, but Clint can keep himself reined in. He has to. He wakes up hard a few times and always makes sure that his erection isn’t touching James and feels nauseous the few times he wakes up with his dick poking James in the back. What James must think of him. 

James has been hurt so much in his life. Clint can’t imagine being the source of any more pain. 

He’s laying in bed one morning, staring up at the ceiling, when the bedroom door creaks open. Natasha pokes her head in and Clint immediately sits up and smiles at her. God, he hasn’t seen her in _weeks_. It feels like no one comes to visit him anymore. 

He wonders if it’s because they read the files on him from HYDRA and think the worst of him. 

He waves her into the bedroom and picks up his hearing aids off the nightstand, but before he puts them in, she’s standing in front of him, shaking her head. He frowns at her and slowly puts them back down. She points to the bathroom and he can see her mouth _shower_. Oh, alright. He probably smells anyway. 

She pats him softly on the shoulder as he gets up and goes to take a shower. He glances back to see her pulling the sheets off the bed. God, he loves her. 

He takes a quick shower and shaves his face and washes his hair and even trims up his pubic hair a little. Why not, right? He stands under the warm spray and thinks, _It has to get better. Right? It has to._

He turns off the shower and rubs himself down with a towel and enters the bedroom again to see Nat finishing up putting new sheets on the bed. Then she winks at him and kicks her shoes off and rolls onto the bed and starts bouncing on it. 

Clint laughs at her and joins her, holding his towel up with one hand. 

They jump up and down on the mattress like they’re kids. He laughs like he hasn’t laughed in fucking years. 

When they’re done, they collapse next to each other, breathing hard, and Clint turns and smiles at her and then rolls over and hugs her. 

A moment later, a metal hand is ripping her away from him and Clint falls off the bed, scrambling to his feet, barely remembering to hold the towel up, watching in shock as James and Natasha scream at each other. They both go red in the face and they’re pointing at Clint like _he_ did something wrong and he edges around the room to get his hearing aids, but James turns and snarls something at him, teeth bared, and Clint pales and ducks his chin and nods and doesn’t move. 

Natasha goes back to screaming and James screams back. He has no earthly idea what they could be so mad about. Maybe James saw them jumping on the bed? That doesn’t seem like something to get _this_ mad over, but maybe James had told him not to and he forgot. He almost offers up for James to hit him but then remembers how strong James is and winces at the thought of his soulmate breaking his jaw. 

“James,” he says out loud, and hopes he’s not too loud. The two of them immediately stop yelling and turn to look at him. “I’m sorry. We won’t do it again.” He motions with his free hand to the messed up sheets and the mattress that’s off-center. 

James’s eyes fill up with tears and he shakes his head. He says something but his hair gets in his face and Clint doesn’t have a single hope of even guessing what he said. Natasha frowns at the two of them and Clint scoots closer to finally grab his fucking hearing aids. He drops the towel while he hooks them over his ears and slides them in. 

He’s always hated the way sound bursts back in. It’s never gradual. It’s like a switch is flipped and suddenly he can hear. It makes his head hurt sometimes, and this is one of those times. 

Neither of them are talking. James is blushing and Nat is rolling her eyes. Clint goes over to his dresser and pulls on a pair of boxers and one of James’s shirts and then crosses his arms over his chest and turns back to look at them. 

“Are we done?” he asks. 

James lifts his chin and looks at him. Clint could search for the rest of his life and never find that shade of blue in the world anywhere but here. “Yeah,” he says. “We’re done.”

And he walks out of the room. 

Clint can hear the door to their apartment close behind him. 

He turns to Natasha, who is shaking her head. “Help me with this,” she tells him, motioning to the bed. Clint silently helps her pull the sheets back up and set the mattress to rights and pick up the old sheets and take them down the hall to the washing machine. 

“Wanna tell me what that was all about?” Clint finally asks as they watch the clothes spin around in the soapy water. 

“Just a misunderstanding, that’s all,” Natasha tells him, and kisses him on the cheek and then leaves for the elevator. 

Clint goes back to their rooms and curls up on the couch and turns on the TV. Awhile later, he gets back up, goes to put the sheets in the dryer, and then after another awhile, pulls them out of the dryer and folds them and puts them back in the closet. 

He stays up on the couch past midnight, glancing at the door every few minutes, and eventually goes to bed, but James doesn’t come back.

* * *

It’s been a week and James hasn’t returned. Clint feels like he’s going to lose his mind. He’s pretty sure they would’ve told him if James was abducted by HYDRA again, or if he fell into some kind of coma or something, but he hears _nothing_. Nobody tells him anything. Nobody even comes to visit. It’s painfully clear to him that Sam and Steve were only ever there because of James, and he finally managed to push Natasha away, and it’s not like any of the other Avengers really even liked him. 

He wonders when they’re going to kick him out of the Tower for good. 

He misses James so much it feels like a body part is missing. It feels like all of his skin is gone and he doesn’t have anything holding him together. He gives messages to JARVIS for James but never hears anything back. He tries to write letters but it’s like his hands have the same problem as his mouth and he can’t make the words come out. Whatever he did, he’s so fucking sorry and he won’t do it again. 

It’s on the eighth day that he decides he has to go look. He starts shaking the second he leaves their apartment, but he thinks he should at least get a proper goodbye. He just wants to look at James one last time before he goes and hermits himself away in some storage closet and never bothers anyone ever again. 

He’s tried a few times to leave over the past week. One time he even made it to the elevator but couldn’t make himself push any of the buttons. But this time he whispers for JARVIS, and a few moments later, the elevator dings as the doors open. 

“Mr. Barnes is on the communal floor,” JARVIS tells him. “Would you like for me to bring you there?”

“Please,” he says, and squeezes his eyes shut as the elevator rises. 

It feels like his throat has closed up by the time the elevator doors open again. He opens his eyes and almost falls back at seeing the open windows and all the _space_ and Jesus Christ they’re all _looking_ at him and there’s so much space it’s all pressing down on him and—

Bruce is in front of him and Clint has always taken comfort in his calmness. One hand on his chest and his eyes are locked with Bruce’s and once the blood stops rushing through his ears, he manages to hear Bruce telling him to breathe, in and out, easy does it. 

He’s calm enough to lean on Bruce as he looks around the massive room. He doesn’t think he can leave the elevator, but he can’t see James anywhere. 

“Where is he?” he asks Bruce, who sighs.

“Down the hall,” Bruce tells him. “In the kitchen.”

He doesn’t know if he can do it. He feels like he’s going to die with the very first step he takes off the elevator. It feels like all the air in the room is simultaneously pushing down on his lungs and trying to escape from them. But he takes the first step, and then another, and then he’s down the hall and he can see James in the kitchen, leaning up against the counter, talking with Scott and Hope. 

“James,” Clint says, and James stops and turns his head and looks at him. He leans so heavily on Bruce that the scientist staggers for a moment in holding him up, and then Steve is on his other side, taking his weight, and Clint suddenly finds his feet, finds his strength as James says his name. 

“Clint? What are you doing here? _How_ are you—” James shakes his head and moves towards him. 

“I just wanted to know when you’re coming home,” Clint says, and he’s suddenly exhausted. He’s so tired he could sleep for a year. He just wants James back in bed with him. He’ll sleep on the floor if that’s better. He’ll sleep out in the hall. He’ll do _anything_ for his soulmate. 

James freezes and his face hardens. “Why?” he bites out.

Why? _Why?_ Out of every question in the world, _Why?_ Clint’s mouth won’t work and James’s lovely face curdles into something mean and hurt. “I miss you,” Clint finally manages to get out. “I don’t know why—”

“This isn’t the place for this,” Steve says next to him, and Clint jerks in surprise, having forgotten he was there, or anyone else was there. But Clint nods and Steve helps him to a small room filled with comfortable couches, and it’s still a bit too big for Clint to breathe easily, but he sinks down into a couch with a sigh of relief. 

James follows him in. Steve hovers in the doorway, asks if James wants him to stay. James shakes his head. “I’ll call you if I need you,” he mutters and Clint feels like someone just punched his heart out. 

James sits on the couch opposite from him. Sits and looks at him. Waiting. 

“I don’t know why you left,” Clint says finally. “I don’t know what I did, but I won’t do it again. I know I haven’t been a good soulmate”—he feels horror splash over him as James winces at the word—“but I’ll try to do better.” He feels exhausted and scared and his mouth feels like it barely works, but he’s more determined than anything else. He just wants to know what he did wrong. If he knows what he did, he can change. He’s willing to change. Does James not know that? He’ll do anything—

“I just want to hear you say it,” James says, and his voice is stiff and there’s an undercurrent of hurt that Clint doesn’t understand. 

“Say what?” Clint asks desperately. He didn’t _do_ anything, he hasn’t even tried to kiss James in a month, he hasn’t even gotten hard for longer than that, he doesn’t even know what he _did_—

“I saw you,” James snarls out. “In our bed. With _her_. You were naked.”

For a moment, Clint genuinely has no idea what James is talking about. Then he remembers Natasha and the two of them acting like idiot kids and he smiles and shakes his head. “Yeah? And?”

James throws his hands up in the air and pushes to his feet and paces in short, furious, rapid strides in between their two couches. He looks so pissed off that Clint readies himself to take a beating. If that’s what it takes to make this right, he’ll take it. James can hit him all he wants if he just comes back. 

“Soulmates are even supposed to be able to kiss other people,” James finally says, “so I don’t know how you had sex with her, but you _did_, and now you’re lying and acting like it didn’t even happen? Clint—”

“How did you know about that?” Christ, it’d been, what, fifteen years? They’d both been drunk and, hell, Nat was pretty and neither of them had met their soulmates yet and pre-soulmate sex isn’t a crime. He doesn’t know how James knows about that, though. 

“I found you in bed together!” James _shrieks_. “In our bed, Clint! Panting and laughing and smiling like you never do with me! I’m not stupid, Clint, it was pretty obvious what you two had been doing and I don’t know _how_ you did it but I won’t be cheated on. I won’t.”

Clint can’t make heads or fucking tails of this. He sits up straight and shakes his head. He holds up a hand as his tired, shitty brain tries to come up with something to say. “Hold on,” he finally gets out. “You think Nat and I had sex. A week ago. Not fifteen years ago, but last week.”

James grits his teeth and nods. There are tears in his eyes. 

“I don’t even know...James, she got me out of bed, told me to go take a shower, and she changed the sheets for us. Then she wanted to jump on the bed, so I did that, because it’s _Nat_, and she’s my best friend in the world and she was just trying to cheer me up, and she wouldn’t jump on a bed in a thousand years for any other reason, and then you came in and yelled because you thought we were having sex?” His jaw hurts from talking so much. He’s so tired it feels like the room is tilting. 

James frowns at him. “JARVIS,” he calls out, “play the recording of our bedroom on the afternoon of—”

“Wait, there’s cameras in there?”

A small projector drops down from the ceiling and JARVIS’s smooth voice says, “Yes, Agent Barton, there are cameras in every room in the Tower, other than the bathrooms.”

Clint is going to be sick. He slumps down out of the couch and presses his face to the carpet and tries to hold back his gags. He just—he wants to be free. He thought he’d gotten away from cameras once they’d rescued him from HYDRA. Now how does he even know he’ll ever be safe again? How does he know that there aren’t HYDRA agents watching him now? His skin crawls. 

A video begins to play and he hears Natasha’s voice, muttering in Russian. James snorts at whatever she says. Clint takes in a deep breath and curls his arms over his head and maybe if he just never gets up again, no one can see him do anything. 

Then comes the sound of what Clint assumes is him and Nat jumping on the bed, and the two of them are laughing and Clint looks up to see himself on the wall, looking happier than he’s ever seen him. 

Then they both fall down onto their backs and laugh and breathe heavily and then the bedroom door opens and James is standing there, staring at them. 

Next to him—Clint doesn’t know when James moved to get so close to him—betrayal dawns on both the projected James’s face and the man next to him. They both come to differing conclusions. 

“We had sex probably about a decade and a half ago,” Clint says after James pauses the video and stares up at his own furious, betrayed face. “We were both drunk. We fucked, decided the next morning to never do it again.” He snorts at himself. “Well, I guess I could say that she fucked me.”

James gives him a faintly scandalized look. 

Clint grins at him. “The Black Widow wields a mighty strap-on,” he teases, and James blinks and then tips his head back and laughs. 

Clint watches him. He hopes he’s good enough for James now. It’s instinct he’s following as he leans up and tries to kiss James as James leans forward, wiping tears out of his eyes. 

James recoils immediately and Clint’s good mood is washed away with cold water. Right. His soulmate runs off and refuses to talk to him for a week if he even thinks that Clint might’ve slept with someone else, but God forbid Clint try to kiss him. He just got caught up in the moment. 

“Sorry,” he mutters. “I’ll stop trying, I promise.” Then he looks up at the ceiling. “JARVIS, where are the cameras in our rooms?”

“They are hidden, Agent Barton,” JARVIS replies. 

Clint nods, tries to figure himself out. “Well, tell Tony that either he can unhide them and he can remove them, or I can tear the entire ceiling and all the walls apart to find them. I’m not gonna he recorded anymore.”

There’s a pause, and then JARVIS cheerfully replies, “Sir says he will have them removed by tonight.”

“All of them,” Clint warns the AI, and then he yawns and clambers back up onto the couch. He curls up in a ball and blinks tiredly at James, who is frowning at him. “I’m sorry,” Clint tells him, hoping James believes him. “I don’t know what you remember, but I never hurt you. I could never do that. I’ll stop trying to kiss you, I promise.” He closes his eyes. “I just want to be a good soulmate for you, James, but I don’t think I’m doing a very good job.”

“Clint,” James whispers, but before he can say anything else, Clint has fallen into the sleep of the mentally exhausted. James watches him sleep for a while and then stretches out on the couch himself, tugging at Clint so that the sleeping archer stretches along his length, curling his head under James’s chin, somehow managing to stay asleep the entire time.

* * *

Clint wakes up in James’s arms the next morning. He knows he shouldn’t, but sometimes he likes to lie in bed and pretend that James loves him in all the ways Clint wants him to. Sometimes he’ll pretend that when James wakes up, he’ll clutch Clint closer, like the last thing he would ever want in the world is to let him go, and then James would separate just long enough for him to pull Clint up and to press their mouths together and—

That’s almost always when James wakes up. Clint never gets further than the kiss. He’s trying to be better now, though, so he just lays there on the couch and tries to pretend he’s still asleep. Sometimes James will cuddle with him for awhile longer if he doesn’t think Clint is awake. 

This morning, however, James rumbles something in his chest and cranes his head down to press a kiss to the top of Clint’s head and then he slides out from underneath him and gets up off the couch and stretches. 

Clint feels like his heart has stopped in his chest. He lies awake, staring at the dark red fabric of the couch, unable to believe that James had just _kissed him_. It must’ve been a mistake. Maybe James had thought he was someone else, whoever it was that he wanted to be his soulmate more than Clint. There’s no way that James would’ve just leaned down and kissed him. 

God, he hopes he didn’t imagine it. 

He sits up slowly, cautiously, and James is in front of him, handing him his hearing aids. Clint puts them in and looks up at his soulmate, who looks far too cheery for the morning. Clint doesn’t know what time it is but he thinks it’s the morning. 

“Coffee?” James asks.

“Sure,” Clint says, and James holds out a hand. Clint wonders if it’s some kind of trick before chastising himself and taking it. James pulls him to his feet and smiles at him. He’s a little bit taller than Clint, just a couple inches, and Clint tries to keep it off his face how much he wants to kiss him. The more he tries to push the urge away, the higher it rises. 

James squeezes his hand and then let’s go. “Kitchen is just down the hall,” he tells Clint, who freezes. “Come on.”

“I can’t,” Clint whispers, looking around the room they’re in. He needs to get back to their apartment _now_. He suddenly feels tears prick at his eyes and all the stress of the past week suddenly comes crashing down. He feels like he needs to curl up in a closet and sleep for a week. “I need to go back.”

James frowns at him and Clint can’t take it. He knows he’s not good enough, he knows James deserves a better soulmate than him, he knows he’s weak and pathetic and no, he can’t fucking walk down the hall to the kitchen. He _can’t_. He feels like the entire Tower will cave in on him if he does. 

He turns away from James and says, “JARVIS, what’s the fastest route to my room?”

“Down the hall to the left, to the elevator, Agent Barton,” JARVIS replies calmly. “There are no people anywhere in the vicinity.”

Clint nods, takes in a deep breath, and opens the door. Light spills in and he winces but he doesn’t give himself time to adjust, he just grits his teeth and ignores the way the world presses in on him and turns left. At the very end of the hall, very far away, a mile off in the distance, he can see the elevator. 

If he doesn’t look anywhere else, Clint thinks he can make it. If he makes it to the elevator, he’s safe. 

His feet don’t want to move. 

He makes them. 

The elevator seems further away with every step but eventually, after what feels like a calendar year, the elevator doors open for him as he steps in front of them. He’s shaking and he can’t stop it. He feels clammy and like he’s about to cry still and like he’s wearing too many clothes but also not enough. 

James gets on the elevator with him. They’re silent except for the way Clint’s breath shakes as he breathes. 

Then the door opens and Clint lets out a sob as he sees the open door of their apartment at the end of the hall. If he had the energy to run, he would. But all he can do is walk, and then come to a slow stop as he pushes open the door. 

Everything looks the same. 

“JARVIS,” he calls out, “are the cameras gone?”

“Yes, Agent Barton,” the AI replies, and Clint slumps in relief. James steps up next to him and Clint is too far gone to even question the supportive hand on his back. “All cameras on this floor have been removed by Sir. The only one left is recording the elevator.”

Clint can live with that. 

He strips in the living room and drops his hearing aids somewhere and is in his bed in less than a minute. He doesn’t think sleeping this much is normal but he’s so fucking tired that he doesn’t think he’s going to move for a year. 

He’s asleep in less than another minute. 

He doesn’t dream about anything. 

He wakes up to metal fingers gentle petting his hair. Somehow James got in bed with him and Clint is laying completely on top of him like a leech. He slides off and yawns and stretches and then James is holding out his hearing aids. 

Clint slides them in and yawns and rolls over onto his stomach and looks up at his soulmate. He remembers being in the cell, and then later the larger cell, and remembers laying in bed next to his soulmate, waking up just like this. Sometimes James had even been aware enough to look at Clint like he knew him. Clint had never fooled himself into thinking that his soulmate remembered him after he’d been in the Chair, but there had been moments where their eyes had met and Clint had thought, _He knows me. He knows me like I know him. He knows we belong to each other._

James sighs and gives him a small smile. “We need to talk,” he says. 

Clint nods. “I need to go to the bathroom,” he deflects, and scrambles out of bed and slams the bathroom door shut behind him. He can’t even get his mind straight enough to piss. It feels like 10,000 thoughts are suddenly rushing through his brain. 

He can’t imagine what James would want to talk about. Clint knows he hasn’t been good lately, but he said he’d try. He’ll let James hit him if he wants. He probably deserves it anyway. But he’s been _trying_. He’ll be better, he decides. He’ll figure out exactly what it is that James wants and he’ll become that person. He’ll do anything. 

He washes his face and his hands and looks at himself in the mirror. He brushes his teeth and then pisses and there’s nothing left to distract himself with—a shower or a bath would be too obvious, and there’s no window to climb out of—and so he finally leaves the bathroom. 

James is still on the bed. He pats the spot next to him. Carefully, Clint slides under the covers and then scoots over to the spot. James is always so warm. Clint slides a bit closer and James turns his head and gives him a small smile. 

“I don’t want you to stop trying to kiss me,” James finally says in little more than a whisper. “I want you to kiss me. I want to kiss _you_. I just...whenever you do, I see—”

“I never hurt you,” Clint interrupts, almost desperate to make sure James knows he could _never_. “They even wanted me to and I never did. I promise we never did anything more than cuddling.”

James frowns at him and then horror dawns on his face. “Clint, Jesus, did you think I thought—_no!_ I never thought _you_ hurt me. It was never you. It was always _them_. Whenever you—I hear them. Him. Pierce, sometimes, some of the other scientists. They would tell me all this stuff about you, about soulmates, stuff that gets twisted up in my head until I don’t know what’s real. I’m working on it, I’m figuring it out, but I get stuck sometimes. I get caught up and I don’t know what’s real.”

“I’m real,” Clint breathes out. “I’ve always been real. I’m not going anywhere.”

And that’s the thing, isn’t it? That no matter what, despite anything, despite everything, Clint is never going to go anywhere. He’ll always be there for James. He fought through hell for his soulmate and he’s never been one to turn away from someone he loves, no matter the consequence to himself. 

“I know,” James says simply. “If there’s anything I know, it’s you. But I’m…” he fades off, frowns as Clint looks up at him, looks at his face that Clint knows better than his own, and Clint slowly, carefully, reaches out and sets his hand on top of James’s. James looks down at their hands, at Clint’s on top of his own metal hand, and James smiles, just a bit. “I want you,” James finally says, the simple statement sending a blossom of heat through Clint’s stomach. “I didn’t know anything before you.” He sighs. “They used to tell me that if I didn’t complete a mission, if I failed or messed up, that they’d bring me to you and they’d make me kill you. I wouldn’t even know what I was doing until after and then I would have to live with the knowledge that I’d killed my soulmate. They told me they could keep me alive afterwards, that because we never completed the bond that I wouldn’t die, I’d only want to. I wouldn’t even know who you were, I would just know that you were _mine_ and that I couldn’t let anything happen to you.”

Clint sits up and when James doesn’t try to pull away from him, he slides his arms over James’s shoulders and pulls him close. Of course HYDRA had pitted them against each other. Of course he hadn’t been the only victim. He’d just thought that...he’d never thought that James had cared. “I didn’t know,” he replies softly. James shivers and slips his arms around Clint’s waist and picks him up to hold him in his lap. Clint curls against his chest, arms still around his soulmate’s shoulders. “They used to punish you if I did something wrong. A few times they pinned me down and pushed hearing aids into my ears to make me listen to you scream. James, all I ever wanted is you. No matter how. Even if—even if this is all I get.”

He wants James to tell him that Clint has nothing to worry about, that Clint is the great love of his life, that Clint is all he’s ever wanted and all he’s ever thought about and Clint knows better than to expect he would ever be that for someone. He’s second best on his best days, and he’s far from those.

James leans his head down and presses his chin to the top of Clint’s head. “I wish I was better at this,” he finally sighs out. Clint immediately tries to protest but James tugs affectionately at his hair and the shock of it makes Clint’s mouth snap shut. He wishes he understood what was going on, wishes James would just tell him what to do. “I’ve been working on it, you know. Every day I ask someone for advice. Did you know I have three therapists? I see one of them almost every day.” He tips his face over so his cheek is pressed to Clint’s head and Clint can feel him smile. “All I ever want is to talk about you.”

“James,” he breathes, and can’t seem to say any more.

“I’m trying,” James says again, a bit more forcefully this time. “I know you deserve someone better. That’s why I thought you and Natasha—I just saw the two of you and couldn’t imagine how you would stay with me if you could score someone like her.”

Clint tries to pull away and James lets him. Clint sits up and crosses his legs in front of himself and looks at James, who won’t make eye contact with him. Clint hasn’t felt this out of his depth since HYDRA fucking kidnapped him.

“I hear SHIELD agents talk, you know,” James continues on, voice almost a whisper, “and they talk about you and her. They talk about the feats you’ve accomplished, the training you’ve done, how the Avengers can defeat any opponent when Hawkeye and the Black Widow are teamed up. How could I—how can I compete with that?”

His mouth can’t seem to do anything other than hang open. Clint tries to speak but he’s so stunned that his brain can’t even process what James is saying. James glances over him and gives him a small, uncomfortable smile.

He takes in a deep breath and says, “I don’t know how you can look at me and not blame me for what HYDRA did to you.”

Clint feels like Thor just took Mjolnir to him. He feels like he just got punched off a fucking building. He feels like he can’t even breathe for a minute and almost starts to panic when his lungs suddenly remember how to work and he takes in a deep, gasping breath. James reaches for him and rests his metal hand on Clint’s chest. Clint leans into it and somehow his mouth says, “What?”

Then he says, “You think I _blame_ you?”

James has slowly started to turn red. Clint is almost worried that he’s reddening out of anger but he’s seen James angry and he always goes quiet and mean, not like this. James bites his lip and Clint is almost overtaken by the urge to lean forward and raise his hand to James’s jaw and pull his lip from his teeth, but he knows how to stop himself now. “Don’t you?” James whispers.

“No?”

He could’ve sat and meditated like a monk or whatever for the rest of his life and he never would’ve even _thought_ to blame James for anything that’s happened to him. It would not have occurred to him even if the Winter Soldier had tried to kill him or had raped him or had done any dozen or hundred horrible things to him. He wouldn’t have blamed him if James actually had killed him.

A brief frown flickers across James’s face and he ducks his chin and his hair falls across his face and this time, Clint can’t resist himself. He reaches out with one shaking hand and pushes James’s hair off his face with the tips of his fingers. On his chest, James’s metal hand slips down to palm his soulmark. Clint wonders why he’s never touched the other one. He’s never asked, but he wonders.

“I’ve never blamed you for anything,” Clint finally manages to get out. “It was never your fault.”

“The only reason they kidnapped you was because of me!” James barks out, but his hand stays soft on Clint’s stomach so Clint knows he’s not mad at him. Even if he was mad, James could do anything to him and Clint would happily sit there and take it.

“They kidnapped me because they were evil Nazi fucks,” Clint says, and he’s almost amused by it all. “They said they were looking for your soulmate since they took you. I think that’s on them.”

James’s other hand comes forward and slides over Clint’s left shoulder, his fingers briefly glancing over him and then pressing down. His fingers inch slowly over to the five-pointed star on Clint’s left shoulder. Clint feels like he can barely breathe. “I never wanted them to hurt you,” James tells him, and he says it like a secret, like he can barely believe it himself. “All I ever wanted was for you to be safe.” He pauses, swallows, and glances over the room before looking at Clint, who feels like he may never remember how to breathe. James hasn’t paid this much attention to him since...since ever, maybe. He feels full with it, like his heart is overflowing. He wonders if this is how other soulmates feel all the time. He doesn’t even know if he could manage it. He thinks he’s going to cry. “I’m sorry,” James finally says. “I’m sorry you had to be in that cell for so long. I was never myself for long enough to try to get you out, but I wanted to. Even when I didn’t know you, I wanted you to be free.”

Clint searches his face. He thinks, as he has before, that there’s never anyone else he would rather look at. He remembers being a kid and laying in the grass and staring up at the clouds in the sky and wondering how his soulmate would look, if they would be pretty or handsome or ugly or funny looking. He’d known even then that he would never care, that no matter their physical attributes, they’d be the most beautiful person in the world to him. But James is...Clint feels blessed whenever he looks at him. Feels like he got one good thing out of this shit life of his. He’d go through hundreds of years in that shitty HYDRA cell if he got James out of it. He’d do anything.

“All I ever wanted,” he finally manages to grit out, “is you. For you to be safe. James...there’s nothing I wouldn’t do. HYDRA even tried to find the limit and there isn’t one. I would’ve shot Steve right in between the eyes for you and I wouldn’t have regretted it for a second. They could’ve asked me to kill every single friend I’ve ever had and I would’ve agreed to it if it kept you out of that Chair. James…” he trails off and can feel the second his mouth goes stupid again. He ducks his chin and looks away. He doesn’t regret it, doesn’t regret saying it, but as the silence between them grows, he regrets saying anything to James. James doesn’t need to know how desperate he is. James doesn’t need to know how far he’s willing to go, how much more of himself he’s willing to give. If there’s a limit, Clint hasn’t found it. He isn’t even sure he ever could.

James’s hands move to cup Clint’s waist and tug him closer, and he goes, because how could he not? Then they slide up and cradle Clint’s jaw as he straddles James’s thighs, and Clint blinks a few times as he looks down at his soulmate. There isn’t much light in the room, but it feels like it’s all directed at James’s face, like it’s the only thing Clint can see.

James looks at him for a long time. Clint feels hungry with it. His stupid mouth wants to kiss James so badly that he can taste the desperation on his tongue. Finally, both of James’s hands slide from his jaw and trail down his neck and then rest on his chest, palms over his pecs. Clint leans into it just to feel the strength of his soulmate against him. “I love you,” James finally says. “I’m sorry I’m not better at it.”

“I never asked for you to be good at it,” Clint breathes out, and he leans forward, and after a moment where James’s eyes go wide, he leans in as well, and Clint touches their foreheads together and closes his eyes. “I just want you,” he says as softly as he can. “Just you.”

James slides his arms around Clint’s waist and holds him close.

Clint can’t manage to talk any more for the rest of the day but James doesn’t seem to mind. They eventually climb out of bed together and James goes to shower while Clint decides to scour every inch of the apartment for cameras. He doesn’t find any but he does find a small stack of journals that James has completely filled. He’s curious but he knows better. He puts them back where he finds them and continues on looking. JARVIS assures him that Tony got rid of all the cameras but Clint has to be certain.

He wonders why they didn’t tell him there were cameras in the first place. Who was watching him? Why were they watching him? How can they be sure that whoever was watching him wasn’t an undercover HYDRA agent? Why was there a camera in the bedroom in the first place?

James finds him curled up next to the couch. Clint doesn’t even remember how he got there, only that he was panicking about the cameras. Before, James would’ve asked if he needed anything, would’ve gotten him a blanket and draped it over him and then awkwardly left him alone. But this time, James gets him a blanket and then sits next to him, lets Clint lean against him. James doesn’t say anything and Clint can’t make his mouth work. But it passes faster this time and it feels like it’s just a few minutes before he’s breathing easier again. James doesn’t move, just sits there with him.

“The cameras?” James asks.

Clint nods a little. 

“I didn’t know they were here either.”

It seems like James wants to say something more but Clint can’t take it anymore. He pulls out his hearing aids and sighs in relief as the world goes softly and blessedly quiet. James gently takes them from him and then holds Clint’s hand.

It’s good. It’s enough.

* * *

Things don’t get better right away. Clint and James build on themselves and their relationship every day and they both try and talk more and it’s alright. It’s better. But James sits closer to him on the couch and after Clint hesitantly and wincingly asks why James only seems to talk to him while he has his hearing aids out, James tells him that it’s easier to talk to someone he knows won’t judge him. Clint tries to express that James could tell him anything, that that’s what soulmates are for, that he’s done more than his fair share of awful things and he’d never judge someone for anything, least of all James, and James just goes quiet and wide-eyed and nods at him and doesn’t say anything to him for a few days. And then one night, as Clint is watching some stupid TV show about some guys in an office, James begins to talk.

He talks about undergoing surgery without anesthesia. He talks about the feeling of HYDRA scientists figuring out the sensitivity settings on his metal arm by pouring gasoline on it and setting him on fire. He talks about the entire world being dark and hateful and evil, except for seeing a man he doesn’t know sitting on a cot in a tiny cell, and reaching out and feeling as if all the light in the world has come back it him as that unfamiliar man smiles at him and holds his hand. He talks about his entire life being pain except for one man and meeting him again and again and never remembering who he is and who they are to each other and every single time, that man smiles at him and takes his hand and never hurts him. He talks about how confused he was at the absence of pain and how he slowly began to enjoy it and not fear it.

James talks for hours.

Clint listens and doesn’t say a word.

That night, as they slide into bed together, James takes his hand and lifts it to his mouth and presses a kiss to Clint’s fingers.

“I love you,” James tells him.

Clint opens his mouth to return it but his lips don’t work and his tongue won’t move, so he only smiles and hopes that’s enough. He curls into James’s side and traces a heart over the arrow on his stomach. James drops his metal hand to his hair and pets him.

Clint falls asleep with a smile on his face.

* * *

He can manage to go up to the Avengers common room now, as long as James stays with him and holds his hand like he’s a kid learning how to safely cross the street or something, and he’s even had a few therapy sessions in the tiny conference room a few floors down, but Clint absolutely cannot manage to leave the tower. He can’t even get near the massive windows without feeling like he’s going to keel over and like his heart is going to beat out of his chest and his throat is going to close up.

He misses the sun.

To his surprise, it’s Thor that manages to get him outside. He’s writing in a notebook one afternoon—Clint has no idea what’s wrong with his hands and all of the doctors have told him there’s nothing physically wrong with him, so it’s definitely something psychosomatic, which just makes him feel fucking _great_—and he’s doing a pretty shitty job at it, and he nearly has a fucking heart attack when the apartment door slams open and Thor is standing there, a massive grin on his face, hands on his hips, and he makes a sound like a godawful trumpet.

“Hawk!” he booms, and over his shoulder, once Clint has picked himself up off the floor, he can see Loki skulking in the hall behind him. Clint had learned that the reason everyone had been avoiding him for so long was that Loki had made a joke about Clint wanting to be left alone, and instead of ignoring him or doing the opposite of what he said like they had all done every single other time Loki had ever said _anything_, all of the Avengers had apparently listened to him and avoided Clint like he’d personally elected Loki to be his personal representative or something. Loki had apologized for the weird miscommunication by bringing Clint an entire cake, which was maybe one of the most surreal moments of Clint’s entire life. It had been a three-tier chocolate cake with bright purple icing. Clint thinks there might actually still be a few pieces in the freezer; he and James had made a night out of feeding bites of it to each other and then engaging in an impromptu food fight where they’d covered nearly half the apartment in purple icing. Clint still finds it in—

“There is a great and terrible storm outside!” Thor thunders out with a massive grin. Loki peeks over his shoulder and then props his chin up on Thor’s huge shoulder, looking at Clint like he’s a zoo animal that has just done something rather entertaining. “We would like you to come join us in watching it!”

“Me?” Clint asks.

“Yes! Come with us!”

Well, can he really say no?

Of course he can. Thor is actually weirdly respectful of boundaries people set and he never seems to do anything purposefully harmful. Other than just barging into people’s homes, he guesses. Maybe storms just get him really excited. He’s the God of Thunder, after all, so Clint can’t really blame him. Scared the absolute shit out of him, though. The guy is freakishly strong and occasionally has broken things or hurt someone, but never on purpose, unless it’s a bad guy or whatever. He usually treats people like they’re made of glass. 

“Outside?”

Thor throws his head back and laughs. “You cannot truly experience a storm if you stay inside,” he explains to Clint, who really has no idea what to say. “Yes, we must go outside.”

“Brother,” Loki says, and sometimes, the way he says _brother_ sounds like how Clint says _James_ or how he wants to say _lover_ or _partner_ or _soulmate_, and for the first time, Clint wonders if Asgardians have soulmates. He thinks that Loki and Thor are a matched set. “If the human wishes to stay inside, surely you should let him.”

“A storm must be enjoyed from the middle of it,” Thor tells Loki, who rolls his eyes like he’s heard that hundreds of times, and he probably has, and then Thor looks at Clint and smiles at him. Clint sighs and stands up. Well, he has to go outside sometime. At least he knows two demigods can keep him safe.

He regrets it the second they leave the elevator. They’re up in Tony’s quarters, on the top floor, and Clint can feel the bottom fall out of his stomach as he looks at all the windows and the rain slapping against them and the sound the wind whipping about outside. Thor laughs at all of it and pats Clint on the back and then moves over to the doors out onto the balcony. Tony has the biggest balcony, of course, as it occasionally doubles as a nightclub or dance hall or whatever kind of weird shit he gets up to, and Thor throws the doors open and Clint wants to curl up in a ball and never come out again.

“Asgard is a beautiful place,” comes Loki’s voice from next to him, and Clint manages to drag his horrified gaze away from Thor and over to Loki, who is standing next to him, hands clasped behind his back, looking like he just stepped out of a magazine or something. He looks both amused and bored, and for some reason, it makes Clint stand up a little straighter. “But even our skies are not as open as yours are here. And our buildings do not go this high up.” Loki thinks for a moment. “Of course, I have been up far higher than this, but even your paltry Midgardian buildings do manage to reach somewhat impressive heights.” With that, Loki turns his head and glances over him. “If you wish to go outside, I will cast a shield over you so that you do not get wet.”

It’s probably the nicest thing Loki has ever done for anyone. Clint blinks at him a few times and then nods. He might be scared out of his fucking mind but even he’s not altrustic enough to turn down an offer like that from a god. Loki raises a hand and a translucent green box appears above Clint and lowers down slowly over him. The second he is enclosed within it, his heart calms and his chest eases and he breathes out a sigh of relief. Loki reaches out and his hand goes easily through the side of the box, and Clint copies him, nodding to himself when he finds he can easily step in and out of the box.

He glances up at Loki, who merely raises an eyebrow at him, and then they both walk outside. The box moves with Clint and as he walks into the storm, he stays dry. Loki waves a hand and the doors shut behind them, and Clint looks around to see rain coming down in torrents, dark clouds hanging low, lightning flashing through them, loud thunder rumbling all around them, and Thor, standing at the railing, arms outstretched. Loki glances over him and then joins his brother.

Clint turns his face to the sky and closes his eyes.

He hears Thor’s great laughter and the thunder grows louder and the rain comes down harder.

Clint smiles.

He takes a deep breath and walks out of the box.

He’s immediately drenched and the wind is so fast and sharp it feels like he’s going to be blown off his feet, and the rain is cold and quick and it’s coming down so heavily he can barely see, but there’s massive lightning all around them and the thunder is so loud that Clint can’t hear himself _think_ and he turns and turns and takes in the nature and the storm and he realizes he has not stopped smiling. He sees Thor and Loki together, silhouetted against the storm, and Clint keeps turning, keeps looking out at the great dark and deep of the storm, feels the way the thunder drums in his chest and the rain is so loud and cold and it’s all so beautiful.

There’s a particularly sharp gust of wind that almost knocks him off his feet and Clint begins to shiver and the magic is gone and he runs back to the doors and for a moment, can’t figure out how to push them open, but then he’s suddenly inside and he falls to his knees and—

James. James goes to his knees next to him and wraps him in a blanket and then holds him close.

It takes a moment for Clint to realize his hearing aids have stopped working and he tugs away from James to pull them out of his ears. He can feel James’s mouth moving against his cheek and Clint sags against him and closes his eyes.

He feels good. He feels good for the first time in a long time. He forgot what it was like to feel good, to feel like he has energy and the ability to use it and then he thinks about how he was just _outside_ and his slight shivers turn to shakes. Someone wraps another blanket around him as he squeezes his eyes shut and curls into James.

Then, out of nowhere. James pulls away from him. Clint reaches out a hand for him and opens his eyes to see James looking down at him, a strange expression on his face. Then James smiles and leans in and—

James kisses him.

It’s brief. It lasts for less than a second.

Clint feels like his heart is going to burst out of his chest.

For a moment, he can feel the way James feels, can feel the love that swells and crests inside of him, in much the same way he himself feels.

He smiles and he can’t hear anything but he says it anyway. “I love you.”

He watches James’s lips move as he says it back.

They’re going to be alright.

**Author's Note:**

> thank you so much for reading! please comment and leave kudos
> 
> follow me:  
tumblr: @deluxemycroft  
twitter: @whenhedied


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